Adam Phillips

Adam Phillips (born 29 January 1971) is an Australian writer, musician and freelance animator whose online alias is Chluaid (pronounced 'Clyde'). His recent work, for which he is best known, has consisted of flash animation compositions published on his website, and on the flash portal on Newgrounds. He is the creator of the Brackenwood series.

Biography[]

Adam Phillips was born (1971) and raised in Narromine, New South Wales. He displayed a precocious artistic enthusiasm early in life. His mother recognized this talent for drawing when he was a toddler, and later maintained that he could hold a pencil correctly before he could stand up, and that he would sit on the floor for hours drawing spiders on his fingers and toes, and fill sheets of butcher's paper with doodles and scribbles.

In 1989, Phillips moved to Queensland to find work, and was later injured in an industrial accident. During his convalescence he dedicated himself to drawing, and in 1993 was hired by Disney to work as a tweener in Sydney. He was promoted in 1995 to the position of character animator, and in 1998 to effects director, a role in which he worked on several sequels to well-known Disney films.

In 2000, Phillips began his first animations in Flash, focusing on stories remembered from his childhood. Phillips is a devoted Ween fan and his flash work soon grew to include an official video for the Ween song Transdermal Celebration, as well as a winning entry in the cartoon category of the Flash Forward Film Festival in early 2003. Later that year, Phillips created Bitey of Brackenwood, the second episode in the Brackenwood series and runner up in The Greatest Story Never Told flash competition. During this period, Phillips also began writing book chapters for flash guides.

In 2004 Phillips left Disney to pursue his own interests. Since that time he has produced much content for his Brackenwood setting. He has also continued to do outside work as a freelance animator, writer and special effects designer.

Phillips has also expressed the interest in creating a television series, various books set in the Brackenwood world, as well as a feature-length Brackenwood film, the latter of which were eventually scrapped as it would be too difficult to produce and no studio was showing interest in the propety. Instead, story elements were reworked into the plot of the video game Dashkin.

Works[]

The Brackenwood series, consisting of 7 episodes
Various other flash animations, including 30 shorts in 30 days and The Wish
Sections in 3 books that teach techniques on how to use Flash

Phillips is also working on the Bitey Castle Academy which would teach art and animation techniques to other artists. The 'Academy' section of his website so far offers 4 chapters of a downloadable ebook on how to create graphics and animation in Adobe Flash CS3.

In 2015 Adam Phillips was willing to end Brackenwood, as he had not had the chance to produce anything for the series for a long period of time, and he, according to himself, had trouble recognizing the characters anymore. However once he subtly announced the death of Brackenwood with a drawing of Bitey approaching a portal, the fans showed immense interest, and Phillips was compelled enough to draw another series of images, showing Bitey going into the portal and entering the world of Brackenwood. Afterwards Phillips announced a Patreon page, with which he intended to try to be able to work full time on Brackenwood with the fans' support and funding. With the support from the Patreon Phillips was able to work on Brackenwood-related projects once a month, but hopes to be able to extend that time with more donations.

Phillips is currently working on a series of animated shorts detailing the various wildlife of Brackenwood called the Brackenwood Wildlife Documentary Series, or BWDS. All episodes are to be narrated by A.K. Alfadel. In 2017 Phillips was able to work on an episode once every month, and stream the work on Twitch.tv for Patrons, however the project was put on indefinite in late 2017 as Phillips and former colleague at EA Arts, the programmer and server engineer Kirk Sexton, spoke about possibly collaborating an official Brackenwood video game. The game, Dashkin, was a revival of a previous failed flash game project, but instead of using the flash format, it would be 2.5D and built using Unreal Engine 4. The game, which is currently being developed and coming into the story mode phase of development, features hand-painted 2D animated sprites on 3D side-scrolling environments and is made in a painterly style, similar to the classic Brackenwood animated shorts. The video game will continue Bitey's story where The Last of the Dashkin left off, effectively replacing the sequel episode. The game will also explore the story of the vanished peoples of Brackenwood, the Dashkin and the Viccans, and their past. There was an initial dropoff of Patreon supporters a few months into the creation of Phillips' Patreon.

Future projects[]

Phillips' long term project was once making a Brackenwood feature film in addition to a television series. Phillips has stated nurmerous times that there is a far larger story which has been only hinted at in his short Brackenwood episodes. As of August 2009, the Brackenwood feature film script was in development, and eventually a full treatment was written. Phillips and his co-writer brought the treatment to different studios, however all of them declined the project. Eventually the feature film project was scrapped. The concept behind the film was that it would somehow continue from where the story left off at the end of the short The Last of the Dashkin, however a sequel episode was announced instead. This short was also cancelled, and its story elements, as well as story elements from the feature film, was reworked into the plot of the video game Dashkin which is currently in development by Phillips and programmer Kirk Sexton. Phillips has on nurmerous occasions said that everything he has made related to Brackenwood, including the online animated shorts, were originally meant to be used as a pitch for a full animated television series, but as it has proven difficult to attract enough interest from studios, Phillips has more or less taken it upon himself to further the brand, for example through the Dashkin video game. He has expressed intentions of hiring animators and artists to help him create the world of Brackenwood in the future.